Toyota Gazoo Racing’s #8 GR010 HYBRID scored a dominant 8 Hours of Bahrain victory this evening from pole position, bringing another highly successful FIA WEC season for the Japanese-flagged team to a close.
The result meant that with their second win of the season, Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa claimed the 2023 Hypercar World Endurance Driver’s Championship.
Toyota’s win in Bahrain, its 45th all-time, also made it six victories from seven races in 2023 for the Cologne-based programme. With five bona fide factory teams now competing in Hypercar, the GR010 HYBRID’s race-winning form throughout the 2023 campaign (Le Mans aside) deserves real praise.
“It feels amazing to win the World Championship again, I am really thankful to the team,” commented Buemi. “Everything went well and in the end we managed to win the race and the championship, so it was a fantastic evening. I think we deserved it this year.
“Obviously, not winning Le Mans was difficult but we showed our strength and won the championship ahead of such tough competition. It is always special to win but this title was won with consistency. Even though we were not always the fastest car, we scored points everywhere, even in the difficult races. We finished on a high and this is the best way to win a championship.”
Behind, the #7 sister Toyota came home second to make it a 1-2. It was a hard-fought podium for the #7 crew after a superb comeback drive early in the race.
Mike Conway was hit from behind by Cadillac’s Earl Bamber on the entry of Turn 1 at the start, which turned the Toyota around, dropping it to the back of the pack. “Everyone trying to win it in the first corner isn’t working well,” he said later.
The Briton was left with a mountain to climb but put his head down and steered the #7 to third in the opening hour. Kamui Kobayashi then took second off the #51 Ferrari 499P of James Calado at Turn 1 with just under six hours to go.
From there the #7’s run to the front stalled, with Hartley, Hirakawa and Buemi at the end managing the gap back to the sister car. The winning margin was 47 seconds after eight hours.
The #7’s season featured so many highs. It’s campaign included wins at Sebring, Spa, Monza and Fuji to keep Conway, Kobayashi and Jose Maria Lopez in the hunt for the Driver’s title and help ensure Toyota claimed the Manufacturer’s crown on home soil. But the #7’s woes at Portimao and retirement at Le Mans proved extremely costly and ultimately prevented them from beating the sister car to the title.
Elsewhere, both Ferraris were mathematically in the title hunt for today’s finale, but for either crew to win the title they needed both Toyotas to hit major trouble.
Neither 499P had the outright pace on this occasion and instead, found themselves fighting for third with the HERTZ Team JOTA Porsche and each other for much of the race. Frustrations did eventually boil over at Ferrari in the second half too, when Alessandro Pier Guidi and Antonio Fuoco made contact more than once after the sixth round of stops.
As for JOTA, its privately run 963 produced arguably the standout performance of the race en route to an impressive fourth-place finish for the British team, after herculean performances from Will Stevens, Yifei Ye and Antonio Felix da Costa.
After hours of fighting, Stevens crossed the line under a second behind Fuoco, who secured the final podium spot in the #50. The sister 499P came home sixth behind the #6 Penske Porsche.
A fifth-place finish for the #6 came on a day when neither Penske Porsche 963, nor the Proton example, truly featured, though the Proton car was in the mix for a while but faded later in the race. It was a quiet outing for both Peugeot 9X8s and the Cadillac V-Series.R too. Cadillac Racing’s 11th-place finish in particular, will come as a huge disappointment for all involved after showing so much promise pre-race.
The car started third after Alex Lynn’s Qualifying heroics but had to serve a 90-second stop and hold for hitting the #7 at Turn 1. With no safety car periods during the eight hours, the team couldn’t find a way back into the race.
In LMP2, Team WRT’s #41 ORECA of Rui Andrade, Robert Kubica and Louis Deletraz comfortably won the Driver’s and Team’s titles with a win from 10th on the grid. It was a metronomic run from the trio to the finish, while their title rivals from United Autosports and Inter Europol endured tough outings, punctuated by setbacks in the first half of the race.
United’s #22 ORECA was handed a punishing 90-second stop and hold for hitting the Vanwall at the exit of Turn 1 at the start, while Inter Europol’s car lost chunks of time to a technical hiccup which forced Albert Costa to stop twice and complete a power cycles.
This made it a relatively comfortable run to the flag for WRT’s title-winning crew in the final outing for LMP2 as a full-season WEC category. The #22 finished ninth, while the Inter Europol Gibson-powered ORECA took sixth. With a lead of over 30 points before the race, it was always going to be a long shot for either United or Inter Europol to clinch the title anyway.
Behind the #41 WRT, the sister #31 car took second making it a 1-2 for the Belgian team that is set to graduate to Hypercar with BMW next year. It was a heartbreaking final hour for Sean Gelael, Ferdinand Habsburg and Robin Frijns though. The trio didn’t put a foot wrong and lost the lead after an issue at its final stop. The #28 JOTA ORECA finished the night in third.
It was a day to forget for Vector Sport’s ORECA and the #23 United ORECA. Both had their races ruined by 90-second stop-and-go penalties for running with tyre pressures below the stated limit early in the race and “gaining a huge advantage”.
Both cars were leading at the time the decisions from race control came through. Vector’s car eventually retired in the final hour with a suspected throttle sensor issue, while the #23 came home eighth.
The final ever GTE victory meanwhile, went the way of the Iron Dames Porsche after a highly-entertaining eight-hour battle for the 13 cars present for the category’s swansong. It was a hugely significant result for the programme and the championship, as Rahel Frey, Sarah Bovy and Michelle Gatting’s performance secured the first-ever WEC class win for an all-female crew.
With the titles wrapped up by Corvette Racing in Monza, this was a straight fight with the pressure of a championship battle lifted. The gloves were off, and the category signed off its stint in the WEC, which dates back to the inaugural season in 2012, with a memorable encounter.
The D’Station Racing Aston Martin took second after Casper Stevenson was unable to catch and pass Gatting in the final hour. The #98 Northwest AMR Vantage made it a double-podium for the British manufacturer with a third-place finish.
“The final stint was pressured and stressful for me inside the car,” explained Gatting, “but in the end, the feedback I was getting from our engineer helped made me stay calm.
“At one point I could really see the #777 Aston Martin was very close. I pushed a bit more to increase the gap a bit, and in the end with the traffic I managed to increase the gap even more and feel pretty in control. To be honest, I just enjoyed the last ride in this car.
“It’s been an absolute pleasure having the opportunity to drive the Porsche this year. Finally getting this win is something we’ve wanted to achieve for a long time, and it’s quite emotional for all of us. This is what exactly what we want to achieve; we want to prove that we can compete on exactly the same terms as everybody else and we are here to win races.”
For much of the race, Iron Lynx’s #60 Porsche led the way, after monster stints from Matteo Cressoni and later Alessio Picariello. Sadly though. the car had to be parked with two hours and 20 minutes remaining as the team’s Bronze, Claudio Schivaoni, was not well enough to drive, the Italian suffering from a fever.
By regulation, the Bronze driver in each car must complete two hours and 20 minutes during an eight-hour race. Thus, the team switched its driver order and held out as long as possible, but Schiavoni felt unable to climb in for the end and the team parked the car early.
“Unfortunately we changed our strategy at the beginning and showed our potential but we had to retire the car. It’s been a great season, we will try next year with the new category.” Cressoni said after the race.
